Kat Edmonson kickstarts her own success

Singer Kat Edmonson talks about her Kickstarter fundraising, working with Lyle
Lovett and recording a cover version of Whispering Grass – with Ink Spots
inspiration rather than Windsor Davies and Don Estelle.

Kat Edmonson says she "got her ego out of the way" as she bustled to get the money together to make the album she really wanted.

The 29-year-old from Austin, Texas, raised funds through an energetic Kickstarter campaign so she could keep creative control of her album Way Down Low. It worked. The album quickly reached No1 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart and the singer attracted the attention of Sony, who have given her a recording contract and are bringing out the record in Britain this month to coincide with a London concert.

Edmonson says: "I had a lot of reservations about Kickstarter, because it wasn't romantic. I was worried that it would take away a lot of the mystery for fans attaching themselves to an artist who then turns up and asks for money. But there were drawbacks about seeking private investors and I was already in copious amounts of debt for funding my debut record, Take to the Sky, from my credit card. So I got my ego out of the way and the whole process brought me closer to my audience."

In the campaign, she offered to do jobs in return for investment. She sang at birthday parties, offered downloads and sang greetings for fans. She even recorded answer phone messages with bespoke melodies . . . "you've reached William Harold's phone," she sings sweetly. Once she had raised the $50,000 needed, she had the good fortune to get renowned producers Al Schmidt and Phil Ramone involved.

The album features eight original tracks (she has been writing songs since she was eight) and five cover songs, including "Whispering Grass (Don't Tell The Trees), a hit in 1940 for The Ink spots and then again in 1975 – British TV nostalgists can sigh at this point – for It Ain't Half Hot, Mum pair Windsor Davies and Don Estelle. Edmonson did not know of the British comedy duo and when I try to conjure an American equivalent of Davies and Estelle, the best I can offer is 'think Abbot and Costello . . . with less humour and less fame'.

Related Articles

The Ink Spots were the first live band she heard, when her mother took her to see them, on a school night. Edmonson also covers the 1966 Beach Boys song I Just Wasn't Made for These Times. She says: "I felt compelled to do a song I knew and had glazed over. I heard it properly for the first time and couldn't believe what Brian Wilson had written. I thought how bold and raw of him to write something so vulnerable. I really identified with it."

Edmonson's voice is unusual – lilting and full of expression – and she says she is wary of "vocalists who do a lot of acrobatics that really just get in the way". Her favourite singers are Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire . . . performers with real personality, who were able to sing. She says she is also inspired by Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra.

One musician who has inspired her directly, and personally, is Lyle Lovett, who duets on the song Long Way Down. How did that come about? She says: "Lyle sought me out after hearing my music and asked me to play with him in Austin, in front of several thousand people. We sang Baby, it's Cold Outside [he prefers the Ray Charles version, she the Dean Martin cover] and we blended and had a lot of fun. Lyle asked me to go on the road with him and he became a great friend and a true mentor. He is always generous with his advice. Plus he's very funny, with a terribly dry sense of humour."

She's self-depracating about her own sweet voice – which features on the soundtrack of the Tina Fey and Paul Rudd film, Admission – and says when things are going well, she feels like she is "transcending, liberated and almost floating". She doesn't consider herself a jazz singer, it was just a label, she says, from the times she sang American standards in clubs from her late teenage years.

Despite the recognition coming her way now, you get the feeling that Edmonson, who has moved to Brooklyn, is still near the start of her musical journey, one that will be all the longer and more successful for the hard work she puts in. She says: "I had to do a lot of other jobs. I did data entry for a tele-marketing firm and some accounting, and I've been a waitress and hostess. I was terrible at everything I did. I'm sure people only kept me on because they liked me, or felt sorry for me.

"But I will never forget how I felt before I did music and, as a result, there is no day bad day now that is worse than what I had before. Every humbling step took away any sense of entitlement. I had to be a musician and do this, otherwise I was really going to hate my life. And I love my life now."

Kat Edmonson's album Way Down Low is out on Sony on 22nd July and she will be playing London's Bush Hall on Monday, 15th July